SURF and Universities of the Netherlands are jointly exploring Mastodon as an open source platform for education and research in the Netherlands. In which public values are paramount. Join us and discover how students, researchers, staff and institutions can experiment with Mastodon in a low-threshold way.
FAQ Mastodon pilot
Do you have a question about SURF's Mastodon pilot? Take a look at the frequently asked questions below. If you don't find your answer, send an email to mastodon@surf.nl.
The most important rules are:
- Be friendly and considerate.
- Do not spread disinformation, spam or advertising.
- No activities that are illegal in the Netherlands.
Read more in the pilot environment's Code of Conduct.
That depends on whether your institution has enabled multifactor authentication for the pilot environment.
This role is limited. As an institution, you must connect to the pilot environment via the SURFconext Dashboard, but otherwise you have no obligations regarding technical operation, enforcing user rules or providing user support. This is done directly by SURF.
Mastodon allows you to migrate your account. This means you can switch to social.edu.nl, but you can also migrate to any other Mastodon server outside SURF at any time.
Are you involved in education or research and is your institutional account changing, for example because you’re moving to a different institution as a staff member or researcher? If you wish to keep your current account, please contact us at mastodon@surf.nl.
As part of the pilot, we are also exploring solutions for situations where someone no longer has access to an institutional account. Among other things, we are looking at eduID: a product that supports lifelong development and learning, and where the user retains control of their own identity. Mastodon could offer a great opportunity to experiment with this in the future, including for other services within education and research.
Information on privacy and security measures can be found in the privacy statement for SURF’s Mastodon environment: https://social.edu.nl/privacy-policy.
There you can read, amongst other things, what personal data is processed, why this is done, how SURF handles this data, what measures are taken to protect data and what rights you have as a user.